Conventional RMAN Backup and Recovery

You can migrate data to Exadata Cloud Service by using Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN). RMAN facilitates a physical migration approach, which is favored in migration scenarios where physical database re-organization is not necessary.

RMAN is an Oracle Database client that performs backup and recovery tasks on Oracle databases. You can use RMAN to migrate data to Exadata Cloud Service simply by transferring a backup of your source database to Exadata Cloud Service and restoring it there. You can also restore from backups stored in Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service.

If your source database resides on Linux x86–64 (like Exadata Cloud Service), and it uses Oracle Database 11g Release 2, or later, you can use RMAN to restore a backup of your source database on Exadata Cloud Service.

If you use conventional RMAN backup and recovery to create a database on Exadata Cloud Service, note that it is not automatically registered with the Exadata Cloud Service console and cannot use cloud tooling for database administration. To enable the Exadata Cloud Service console and cloud tooling, see Registering a Database.

RMAN also provides an active database duplication feature, which performs duplication over a network link between the source and target databases. You must consider the size of your source database, and the speed and reliability of your network connection to determine the feasibility of this approach.

For information about using RMAN, see Oracle Database Backup and Recovery User's Guide for Release 18, 12.2, 12.1, or 11.2.

Note:

RMAN provides other options if your source database platform differs from Exadata Cloud Service:

If your source database resides on another little-endian platform, you can use RMAN to transport the entire database to Exadata Cloud Service. See Transportable Database.
If your source database resides on a big-endian platform, then you can only use RMAN along with the Transportable Tablespaces feature of Oracle Database. This option can only be used to migrate your data tablespaces, not administrative tablespaces, such as SYSTEM and SYSAUX. See Transportable Tablespaces.

Using RMAN and Data Transfer Service

You can use RMAN in conjunction with Oracle Data Transfer Service to migrate large databases to Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service.

When you engage Oracle Data Transfer Service, Oracle ships a storage appliance to your data center. After your data is loading on to the storage and shipped back, Oracle transfers the data to an Oracle Storage Cloud Service container that is accessible from your Exadata Cloud Service environment. See Loading Data into the Oracle Database on Exadata Cloud Service.

RMAN on Exadata Cloud Service uses an SBT (System Backup to Tape) module to access data in an Oracle Storage Cloud Service container. However, RMAN backups in your data center will not use the SBT module, so there are some additional steps that are required to make your backups accessible to Exadata Cloud Service when you use Data Transfer Service to transport RMAN backups from your data center to Exadata Cloud Service.

To use RMAN in conjunction with Data Transfer Service:

Perform the RMAN backup of your source database in line with the following recommendations:
- Perform backupset backups to the NFS mount point of the storage appliance.
- Use RMAN backup encryption.
- Do not use the maxpiecesize option to facilitate faster cataloging of backup pieces.
- Document all of the backup names because these are needed during the restore process.
Perform the following tasks before you restore the backup to Exadata Cloud Service.
- Use the RMAN SEND command to generate metadata so that the backup pieces can be accessed through the SBT module on Exadata Cloud Service. You can specify one or more backup pieces when you run the SEND command. For example:
```
RMAN> run {
               allocate channel t1 device type sbt parms='SBT_LIBRARY=libopc.so';
               send channel t1 '
                    export backuppiece backup_piece_file_name_1;
                    export backuppiece backup_piece_file_name_2;
                    ...
                    export backuppiece backup_piece_file_name_N;
               ';
          }
```
  where backup_piece_file_name_N specifies the file name for each backup piece. Specify each file name as reported by RMAN when the backup is taken.
- Use the RMAN CATALOG command to ensure that the backup pieces are known to your database on Exadata Cloud Service. You can specify one or more backup pieces when you run the CATALOG command. For example:
```
RMAN> catalog device type sbt backuppiece 
           'backup_piece_file_name_1',
           'backup_piece_file_name_2',
           ...
           'backup_piece_file_name_N';
```
  where backup_piece_file_name_N specifies the file name for each backup piece. Specify the file names as reported by RMAN when the backup is taken.